


Pieces

by Fyre



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When something is broken, sometimes you need help putting it back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces

Sam was the one who found him.

Well, sorta.

It’s not really finding someone if you happen to be somewhere that someone shows up to, totally by coincidence.

He’d never been to the Cap exhibit before. Never saw the reason when he could talk to the real thing. Then his niece called him and told him to go see it, because she knew he was buddies with Steve. It was really cool, she said, and when she said something was cool, you damn well had to show up to see it. No one gave a cold-shoulder quite like Jody, if you ignored her advice.

So he went.

And maybe Jody knew more than he gave her credit for, because that’s when he found him.

James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky.

His hand was resting on the interactive display screen, and he was flicking through picture after picture. He didn’t seem to realise everyone was staring at the dead man standing in the shadow of his own image. He didn’t look up, not once, not even when Steve arrived and quietly asked everyone to clear the room.

Even when he wasn’t all star-spangled, there was something about Steve that made people listen, and the hall cleared in seconds.

Sam hesitated in the doorway, chasing the last of the rubberneckers out, worried. Steve just smiled that calm, old man smile of his. He shook his head, and Sam knew he didn’t have any place there, not now. 

He stepped outside and closed the door.

 

__________________________________________

 

Tony was the one who set them up with somewhere out of the way.

Steve didn’t want any fuss. The last thing they needed was Hydra knowing where their rogue operative was. He didn’t call Tony. He just showed up in Stark offices, eyes down, hands in his pockets.

He looked like hell, and Tony didn’t need to take a wild guess to see the old guy was running on fumes.

What the hell, he figured. Cap knew what he was doing.

Still, he gave him the keys to a car and a house out of the city. It wasn’t much, but Steve smiled and patted him on the shoulder and told him he was a good man. Tony rolled his eyes, and made sure that the tracker on the car was working.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the man called the Winter Soldier, but he’d read files. He knew what the man was capable of. He’d seen two matching boxes put in the ground, people he’d never really known at all, and the Winter Soldier’s fingerprints were all over them. 

And if he was sending them back along the same road where that ‘accident’ happened, so what?

If Steve asked - and he never would - Tony would never admit that the last of Stark Enterprise’s weapons were pointed at that house. If there was any hint of a chill in the air, Tony Stark would make damn sure that winter was coming to an end right there.

 

__________________________________________________

 

Barton was the one who kept an eye on them.

Stark’s surveillance was all well and good, but when it came down to it, Fury liked to know he had a man on the ground as well. The mess with Hydra was going to take some work, but the Winter Soldier had to be contained. 

Clint knew Fury didn’t trust the Cap’s judgements when it came to the man who had once been his best friend, but then Fury didn’t trust anyone. Hell, he probably didn’t even trust himself if it came down to it. 

That didn’t matter to Clint.

He could see what Steve was trying to do, in his quiet, unassuming way. Barton had done it himself before. 

Natasha.

She had red in her ledger, she said it herself.

Now, Bucky Barnes was the same.

Both of them had been twisted up and used by people who turned them into nothing more than weapons. They’d been broken apart like science projects and needed someone to help them put themselves back together.

Steve saw the good in Bucky, just like Clint always saw the good in Natasha. When people had been hurt like that, the last thing you wanted them to do was let them get hurt even more, but it was damned hard to do it alone.

After the whole mess with Loki, coming back from the other side, Clint knew how hard it could be.

So when Fury called, looking for eyes on the Captain, Clint volunteered. 

 

__________________________________________________

 

 

Natasha was the one who knew what it was like.

She didn’t like to look back, but she knew her experience would help.

Steve didn’t interrupt as she spoke. Told her hands, really. It was easier than meeting his eyes. He knew she did a lot of Fury’s covert work, but he didn’t know what came before. When she finished and folded her hands together, over and over, it felt like she was stripped bare, vulnerable. It was terrifying.

Steve’s hands closed around hers, warm and just a little rough.

“Thank you,” he said, “for telling me. I know it had to be hard.”

She looked up at him then, and drew on her smile. “If I can come through it,” she said, but trailed off at his grave expression. If. Like she was there yet. They both knew there was a long way to go, but she had the jump on the Winter Soldier. 

No. 

Bucky. 

The Winter Soldier wasn’t anything more than a weapon.

The hollowed-out man sitting in the other room wasn’t that thing anymore. He was quiet, too quiet. Natasha didn’t want to push to know how he was. Part of her hoped he remembered, but a bigger part of her hoped he didn’t.

She could still remember all the blood on her hands, and she was just a child by comparison.

She squeezed Steve’s hand and managed to lie well, just once. “He’ll get better.”

“Yeah.”

For the first time, Steve didn’t meet her eyes.

 

____________________________________________________

 

 

Steve was the one who didn’t give up.

The man who sat opposite him wasn’t Bucky, but he wasn’t the Winter Soldier either. He was caught somewhere in the middle, trapped between memories, and Steve never knew if he would be spoken to in Russian or English. 

He tried to do things that would remind Bucky of home, but he’d never mastered making pancakes like Bucky’s mom. The first time he tried, one side came out burned black, and they both looked at it for a good long while, before he admitted defeat and threw it out for the birds. 

Still, he tried.

He dug out movies, made Bucky’s favourite foods, talked about their old neighbourhood until he was hoarse. And all the while, the man who was once his friend sat, watching, his good hand wrapped around the motionless metal fingers of the other.

He knew Bucky hardly slept because of nightmares, and he didn’t know if he was helping at all. Sometimes, it felt like he was. Sometimes, it was as if he was at the bottom of a hole, yelling up and no one could hear.

He tried to keep the brave face on, but when he closed the door at night, it was all he could to get as far as the bed and sit down there, exhausted. It would be easy to break. So damned easy. But he couldn’t. Not as long as Bucky needed him.

So he kept on doing all that he could.

 

_____________________________________________________

 

Bucky was the one who fought.

It felt like he fought every step of the way, like he was drowning and something - that thing - kept trying to pull him back under. He knew they’d done something to him, but he didn’t understand it. He couldn’t. He just remembered flashes, glimpses, moments of his life. His lives.

Steve was with him.

His friend, Steve. 

The man from the bridge. The man from the train. The man who tried to catch him when he fell. The man who he caught as they both fell.

Steve.

He couldn’t remember everything of who the man was to him, but he knew he was important. Had to be important, important enough for him to want to protect him, to save him, against all orders.

No. Not orders.

That was the other one speaking. The one they made. The one who wasn’t him.

That was the one who came at night, the memories waking him, gasping, screaming.

Steve was there every night. Steve held him, helped him, didn’t leave. Steve told him it was nightmares, that it was done with. The past was over. He would be okay. He would stay. They were together. They’d be fine.

Til the end of the line.

That was what he said.

I’m with you til the end of the line.

It was important, and he wished he could remember why.

Until the day he could, until the day he was himself again, he would hold onto it.


End file.
